Tag: Federations

One of the things I find a wee bit annoying about this Slate piece on science fictional languages is that it heavily references Star Trek (not even real Trek but that JJ Abrams thing from 2009) yet keeps talking about all science fiction writers like we all do it this way. Granted, there are some literary examples given, but they are very few and not the focus the way Star Trek is.

Dathon is having none of your linguistic simplicity, no sir.

First, let’s talk about Trek and alien language and culture. The thing all TV and movie iterations of Trek have done is treat each planet like it has one culture and one language. This is why Uhura’s line about three dialects makes some small sense in the world of Trek because Romulus, Star Empire it may be, metaphorically represents one country. A country that is probably small in comparison to Vulcan or Earth since it’s made up of the descendants of refugees.

It’s the same with every Trek culture. Only the ones we see multiple times ever move away from homogeny. How many years and new series had to go by before we saw a non-white Vulcan? There was once an “albino” Klingon, but otherwise they’re generally dark-skinned in TNG-era Trek. They do have different head ridges as time goes on. Did we ever see a Cardassian that didn’t have the very same coloring, bone structure, and facial markings as the first one we saw?

Even the humanoid species that looked exactly human on the outside lacked variation: with few exceptions they were all white people. If we got wild there might be a green person or a blue person with funny horns, but always the same blue or green or whatever.

To go along with the thing where everyone on the planet looks the same (even the same haircut. Do Romulans even have barbers? They would have the most boring jobs ever) the cultures were always the same across the planet. Everyone would talk about how to deal with the Bajoran people or Trills or whatever as if there was only one way to do so. One culture, one society.

The only time I remember TNG-era addressing this was an episode in season 7 when 2/3rds of a planet applied to join the Federation while the other third wanted nothing to do with it. Still though, that’s just two societies on one planet.

I realize that this is part of the utopian vision of Star Trek. That as people of different planets evolved and mass/instant communication became possible, soon they would all become one global society. That’s certainly the way Earth is presented. In the 24th century we’re all one culture: American culture. You can pretend Picard is French all you like, even with his strangely British accent, but you cannot tell me he acts in any way specifically French or even in any way specifically like a man who grew up three centuries from now.

That’s not the point, of course. Because science fiction is about us, right now, and always has been. And I have no beef with that, theoretically.

However, my story in Federations was written specifically in response to TV science fiction ideas about homogeneous alien cultures. I reject them. And I believe a lot of good science fiction novel and short story writers do as well. Because we’re not constrained the way TV writers are.

As much as I’d love more alien cultural diversity in Star Trek, I recognize that it’s mostly metaphor. I also recognize that if we were going to be super realistic, TV episodes would be boring as hell. Can you imagine the tediousness of having to deal with multiple governments and cultures on every single planet? It’s hard enough to deal with just one.

If Star Trek can’t do more than one culture per planet, how do you expect more than three dialects of Romulan? Even if you adhere to the thinking of a planet = a country, most countries have more than three dialects going on. But in every episode we’d be figuring out how to talk to new aliens or even some the Federation has already met because they’re not in the Federation yet. The universal translator takes care of that for us and we can move on to the story.

For the sake of the narrative and simplicity you have to be willing to put up with some handwave.

That doesn’t mean the same applies to science fiction literature. It shouldn’t, at any rate. I wouldn’t assume that it does.

I’m not as up on my space opera as I probably should be, but I know for my own works I try to be careful about falling into planet = one culture thing. Same as I try not to fall into the Planet With A Universal Climate trope. The SF I’ve read using that is also usually more on the metaphorical side and I’m down as long as the author clearly knows what she’s about. It’s when authors get lazy that this becomes a problem.

It seems like an awful lot of work to have to come up with multiple cultures and societies and mention multiple languages and dialects when you write stories dealing with alien worlds or even colonized ones, right? That’s because it is. This is what makes fiction rich and complex. And no, it doesn’t mean having to work out every single detail, it just means not falling back on what’s easy. That’s okay for TV, not so much for literature.

Even though the Slate article is at pains to try and paint the single language thing as scientifically valid, I don’t see that as the way to go. From an alien perspective all of Earth’s languages might seem, at the core, to be all one. And on a certain level that might be right. That doesn’t mean it’s a universal truth, does it? The way different cultures use language has huge effects on how the people in those cultures think, and dealing with those differences has a huge impact on how we Earthlings deal with each other and how we’d deal with alien cultures.

I’m just sayin’: leave the one language, one culture, one planet simplicity to TV. Because it’s TV.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been made aware of several people saying things about my stories but haven’t had the time to mention it here due to some other stuff taking up my time. Heh. Anyway, here it all is in simple list form.

SFScope’s Mark L. Blackman attended the NYRSF Federations reading on July 7th and gave his impressions of the stories and the readers. I have to say, he picked what has to be the worst picture of me, ever! I look like I just discovered a bug in my copy of the antho. :)

After a break, next up was K. Tempest Bradford, whose breezily snarky offering, “Different Day”, was a reaction to the common premises that alien worlds have one culture/one global government and that, invariably, they “come to America first.” She cleverly posits rival alien tribes, just as mutually hostile as our contemporary nations, visiting and negotiating with other parts of the world (like Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama), though her present-day biases and digs limit the story’s shelf-life.

“Elan Vital” by K. Tempest Bradford. A story of dealing with loss, of holding on, and of letting go. The execution is superb, even if the premise feels somewhat familiar (I won’t reveal it here, except to say that this story too is about the undead, although to call it a zombie story would hardly be accurate.) At its core is a parent-child relationship, which as you will see becomes a recurring theme in this issue.

My full Readercon schedule can be found here. I don’t know that I will actually be reading at the Interfictions 2 reading… or maybe we’re doing the thing where we each read for 2 minutes. I now have something to do on each day. When I’m not on a panel or attending one I’ll probably be hanging around the Prime Books table. There you will find copies of Sybil’s Garage and Electric Velocipede as well as Federations (and whatever else that doesn’t matter to me ;) ).

My Week 2 story was complete in the early hours of Sunday morning. But it has no name, so I can’t send it anywhere. Boo! I hate titles.

Today is the last full day I have to spend with my nieces here in Virginia. We went to Barnes & Noble and I bought them a TON of books. I tried desperately to interest my older niece in good stuff like Delia’s Changeling and Neil’s Graveyard Book but she wanted American Girls books. Save me. I did get her to buy Harry Potter, so that’s a start. I got a thrill when I saw Carol’s Graphic Universe books on the shelves. No Twisted Journeys, though. So I’ll have to send them to her. I have some age-appropriate Tiptree submissions I’ll send, too. I’m turning into the aunt that sends books. Hrm. (I also have a small friend in Texas who is getting some books soon, too.)

Friday, 5PM — Salon E: Off ColorK. Tempest Bradford, David Anthony Durham (L), Eileen Gunn, Anil Menon, Cecilia Tan
At various sf conventions, we’ve been to more than one panel during which the panelists try to figure out why there seem to be so few writers of color in the field. As an alternative, we have invited several panelists to discuss what an sf field more enticing to writers of color might look like.

Friday, 8PM — ME/ CT: Annual Interstitial Arts (IAF) Town MeetingEllen Kushner with discussion by Liz Gorinsky, Theodora Goss, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Shira Lipkin, Delia Sherman, John Shirley, Sarah Smith, Catherynne M. ValenteNote: I’m not officially on this but will be there talking about the auction and salons and such.
Interstitial Art falls in the interstices of recognized genres. The Interstitial Arts Foundation is a group of “Artists Without Borders” fighting the Balkanization of art. They celebrate work that crosses or straddles the borders between media, the borders between genres, the borders between “high art” and popular culture. They are not opposed to mainstream fiction or genre fiction, nor are they seeking to create a new category. They are just particularly excited by border-crossing fiction (and music and art), and want to support the creation of such works and to establish better ways of engaging with them. The IAF has had a presence at Readercon from its beginning. In 2007, in cooperation with Small Beer Press, the IAF published Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing edited by Delia Sherman and Theodora Goss, and in fall 2009 they will present Interfictions 2, edited by Delia Sherman and Christopher Barzak. They are also doing a lot with visual arts. Interstitial Arts is an idea, a conversation, not a hard-and-fast definition-and it’s a conversation you are invited to join.

Sunday, 11AM, Maine/Connecticut: The Future of Magazines, Part 2 (Online) — (part 1 is at 10AM)K. Tempest Bradford, Neil Clarke, Robert Killheffer, Mary Robinette Kowal (L), Matthew Kressel, Sean Wallace
Are print magazines doomed? (Heck, if newspapers can’t make it …) Or will they survive in their tiny niches? Are there ways to make them more viable? Is that even worth the bother? After all, online magazines are now easy and relatively inexpensive to start — are they the answer?

Speaking of Federations! The antho has been getting some pretty good reviews. Most don’t mention my story, probably because it’s very short or it just didn’t ping the reviewers particularly (this is not a surprise given how strong this antho is), but a couple have.

There are also smaller but no less important niches to be filled in such a treatment—like humorous moments (would you believe that Harry Turtledove wrote a humorous story about space-faring hamsters?), psychological horror (Robert Silverberg, I will never ever believe in your sweet innocence ever EVER again), and a variety of contemplative and thoughtful pauses (the offbeat waiting-for-Godot style “Carthago Delenda Est” by Genevieve Valentine, the beautiful settings and character interaction of Yoon Ha Lee’s “Swanwatch,” and the most frank treatment of the “alien civilizations are likely not homogenous” I’ve seen or read, K. Tempest Bradford’s “Different Day”).

One of the shortest stories of the anthology and as the editor puts it in the foreword, something of an anti-science fiction story. In just over two pages, Bradford takes a shot at a number of common but fairly illogical themes in science fiction (movies and television in particular). Why do aliens always end up in the US for instance? Why are they so often seen as not only technologically but also morally superior? In itself it’s probably not a brilliant story, or perhaps that is just me, I always have problems appreciating a story this short, but the way Adams slips it in here forces the reader to consider another perspective on the anthology as a whole.

I know I’ve mentioned before that I’m sharing the Federations TOC with some amazing writers, including my friend Cat Valente. Cat is always doing really amazing stuff with her fiction (you’ve seen me go on and on about S. J. Tucker’s musical contributions before) including finding neat ways to add extra meta stuff to it. For Federations, she created an awesome, awesome mix of music and reading and techno and stuff and you should really listen. Then buy the book!

At WisCon I was able to quietly sneak away with a copy of the latest Electric Velocipede (issue 17/18!). I was super excited to see it because my story Enmity is contained within. There are also stories by many friends of mine, including two other Altered Fluidians: Mercurio D. Rivera and Matthew Kressel.

I saw John Klima during his brief appearance and got to hug him a lot. Then on Sunday I wore The Shirt. You know, this shirt:

I have it on good authority that The Shirt moved many copies of the zine. (Also, if you are a fan of EV or of shirts or of me, you can get The Shirt on Zazzle and support the zine in the process.)

This May has been especially awesome for me because I had stories in a book and two zines come out this month. Federations, Sybil’s Garage 6, and Electric Velocipede 17/18 — and all of them were available in the dealer’s room. There were also many copies of the Interfictions anthology and all three WisCon Chronicles! I’m in each, and the newest one is especially spiffy with a fantastic cover. Liz Herny is a goddess.

I was feeling very fancy having so many things in the room with my stories and essays in, so I took pictures:

So I encourage you to order your copy of Sybil’s Garage if I didn’t force it ony ou at WisCon, to buy Federations and WisCon Chronicles vol. 3, to check the Electric Velocipede blog to see when the latest issue will be available for ordering (the copies at WisCon were special advance ones — contributors and subscribers should get theirs soon), and to read, read, read, not just my stories, but all the fabulous stuff in these offerings. May 2009 is a month of awesomeness.